If you thought Hillary Clinton was going to walk away scot free from her scandals just because the election is over… Think again.

A federal appeals court has ruled that the State Department and National Archives did not take adequate measures in recovering the emails Clinton illegally deleted from her private server and is forcing the government to more thoroughly retrieve the erased correspondence.

Conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch and Cause of Action filed lawsuits in 2015 requesting Secretary of State John Kerry and the and the head of the National Archives, David Fierro, seek the help of the attorney general in restoring Clinton’s emails.

A federal trial judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled the States Department and the National Archives had put in “sustained effort” to recover the missing emails they no longer appropriate for judicial action and dismissed the lawsuits as “moot.”

A three-judge panel of the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals, comprised of liberals and conservatives, overturned the appellate court’s decision on Dec. 27, ruling that the lower court judge had erred by pre-emptively dismissing the suits. The State Department’s requests to Clinton and the FBI for copies of her emails were not pursued aggressively enough, D.C. Circuit Judge Stephen Williams stated in the court’s opinion.

“The Federal Records Act governs the creation, management and disposal of federal records,” Senior Judge Stephen Williams wrote for the court, quoting a previous case. “Due to the importance of maintaining federal records (which are generally accessible to the public through the Freedom of Information Act), the act strictly limits the circumstances under which records can be removed from federal custody or destroyed.”

When a Cabinet officer becomes aware that the removal or destruction of federal records has happened or is imminent, he must notify the head of the National Archives, and then “initiate action through the Attorney General” to recover those records. Despite the Federal Records Act’s clear and unambiguous language, Kerry never did so.

…

Although the State Department’s requesting that Clinton please turn over emails produced some results, the D.C.-based appeals court noted that “the Department has not explained why shaking the tree harder—e.g., by following the statutory mandate to seek action by the Attorney General—might not bear more still.”

“In terms of assuring government recovery of emails, appellants have not been given everything they asked for,” the court concluded. “Absent a showing that the requested enforcement action could not shake loose a few more emails, the case is not moot.”

If Obama pardons Hillary, she and Obama admit national security treason and public corruption.

If it’s one second past noon on Jan. 20 and Hillary does not have a pardon, she will be at the mercy of a Republican run State Department and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.